Background: Effective health communication is a core public health capacity, yet existing assessment frameworks often emphasize emergency messaging outputs rather than the organizational structures required to sustain high-quality communication during both routine and crisis conditions. This dissertation examines how national public health agencies can assess and strengthen organizational capacity for health communication, using the National Center for Disease Control and Public Health of Georgia as a case study. The study responds to gaps in global standards and tools, including the Joint External Evaluation, States Parties Self-Assessment Annual Reporting tool, International Health Regulations benchmarks, Public Health Accreditation Board standards, the Social and Behavior Change Communication Capacity Assessment Tool, and the Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication framework.

Methods: A rapid mixed-method organizational assessment was conducted using a structured questionnaire, document review, a focus-group discussion, and follow-up interviews. Eleven NCDC staff participated, producing eight analytic response records. Fifty-seven questionnaire items were mapped to 22 Code IDs across five domains: Health Communication Program; Guidelines and Standard Operating Procedures; Infrastructure, Materials, and Supplies; Health Communication Practices; and Health Communication Coordination. Evidence was first screened for relevance, specificity, completeness, and evidentiary support; records scoring at least 5 of 8 were then rated on a 0–3 maturity ladder. A score of 0 required explicit evidence that a capacity was absent, whereas missing, unknown, skipped, and insufficiently evidenced responses were excluded.

Results: Sixty of 176 possible response-record–Code ID observations met the inclusion threshold, and 21 of 22 Code IDs contained sufficient evidence for scoring. The primary equal-Code ID mean across the 21 assessed Code IDs was 1.07 out of 3; the pooled response-record–Code ID mean was 1.03. No observation included reached level 3. The highest-scoring capacity was multisector and Joint Information Center coordination (2.00), followed by emergency communication planning and spokesperson capacity (both 1.67). The lowest-scoring capacities were an institution-specific RCCE/infodemic-management strategy and formal evaluation or after-action-review procedures (both 0.00), followed by internal coordination and defined roles (both 0.50). Overall, NCDC had a functional foundation, but most capacities remained near the emerging or ad hoc maturity anchor.

Conclusion: Sustainable health communication capacity depends on institutionalized structures, not only skilled individuals or crisis-specific practices. A structure-focused assessment module can complement existing global tools by identifying actionable gaps in governance, financing, workforce, procedures, coordination, feedback, evaluation, and infodemic-management systems. Further reliability and validity testing is required before broader comparative application.